


After the End

by arourallis



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Advanced Speculation ahoy, Gen, Sad, how to train your dragon 3, httyd 3, lots of guessing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 12:32:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arourallis/pseuds/arourallis
Summary: The battle is won, Berk is burned. Like their forefathers, the people of Berk must build anew.





	After the End

There were distractions for the grief at first. Find a new land to establish a new Berk; a place with a low beach to land on, high plains for protection from the sea, trees for lumber, stone to quarry, room to expand and farm… And then they had to rebuild. They had tools, they weren’t starting from nothing. But it was still an uphill battle, a race to build shelter before winter sunk it’s claws into the North. Those who couldn’t build or farm or fish sorted through what was left of their old home, rationing food and blankets and trying to rebuild some semblance of normal. The nights were long and cold and too quiet without dragons, sleep was hard to come by. War haunted the thoughts of too many, and now the vikings of New Berk had to find a new purpose.

They all hoped beyond hope to see a claw, a wingtip, a single scale in the weeks since they parted with their beloved dragons. And every few days, they found a fresh footprint on the beach, or Nadder quill in a door post or an enormous fish in a moored boat. No one ever saw more than a shadow among the stars. But the hints, the traces grew fewer and fewer, until even the most furtive glimpses were no more.

 

Gothi knew, in that way people who had seen too many winters knew, that this winter would be her last. They weathered the cold, all the while Gobber took exhaustive notes of every remedy, story, herb and myth that she knew. There were young vikings to take up the mantle, and many learned, but it was turning into a long wait for the inevitable. When the cough set in, they made their elder comfortable. Soon, Gothi was the first to pass on New Berk. There was a funeral of course, and they buried her on the highest peak they could reach. The silence on Berk was deafening. 

 

In the spring, they found a Fireworm. Only one, small and sickly without it’s mother and her firecomb. Hiccup nursed it as well as he could, and for a time there was hope again. There was a dragon on Berk again. The Fireworm recovered, and seemed content to stay in the new Great Hall’s hearth. Smiles returned to faces that had known too few, and Gobber sang at his forge for the first time in months. Then the village cat presented the dragon, stone-cold dead, to it’s master. Sorrow swept through like a plague, and there were no more easy smiles. Hiccup wept harder than any, and for the first time in weeks he looked hopelessly to the sky for something, anything. There were no more songs. 

As the village grew, distractions became fewer and farther between. The sky called to those that had been Riders, like a lost limb. Hiccup copied the Book of Dragons, over and over, so that knowledge couldn’t be lost. The Book’s binding was loose, the pages worn thin, tired. It wouldn’t last forever. Astrid had to fill in the pages for the Night Fury, when Hiccup could be drawn away from the latest copy. The night’s watch still turned their gaze to the stars, barely daring to hope for a silhouette in the moonlight. They saw nothing.

They planted, they farmed, they fished and spun wool and wove and knitted, and they were not troubled by the wider world. They crafted, they carved and they forged dragons into everything they made, now that the mad rush was over. Whispering Deaths crawled up beams, while Changewings sprawled over rafters. Nadder scales covered bedposts, and flags became wings. The prows of ships bore Scauldron heads and tails, while rooftops sprouted spines. Dragon-kites lifted into Summer air, and the first of a new generation was welcomed into New Berk. That child, and every child after, would be raised on tales of the Berk-that-was, when vikings rode on the backs of dragons. 

 

One generation came into the world, then another. And with time, the memory of dragons grew even more distant. Scales and teeth that had once been as common as seashells became treasured heirlooms, held in ornate chests and only revealed for special occasions. The colors faded, and soon fewer and fewer vikings were left that had ever touched a dragon. Gobber and Spitelout passed not long after they got to see grandchildren, and Valka didn’t last much longer. Hiccup had gone grey well before his time. He was tired of funerals.

In 40 years, there had not been one sighting of a dragon.

Hiccup had long since retired. His back was bent with age, his hands gnarled and swollen with rheumatism and he could hardly leave the house. Astrid wasn’t much better, but she still helped with the midwifery, and helped deliver her great-grandchildren. The empty blue sky still called to their hearts, but they could not answer. Hardly a dozen vikings remained from Berk-that-was, no one carved dragons anymore. The Book was held together by a few threads, and one last shred of hope.

Death came for Hiccup Haddock in the night, for if he had been awake it would have been outwitted. All the village mourned, for days the lament cast over the sea. He was washed and dressed in what remained of his Night Fury scales, and last whole pages of the Book were tucked in his arms. The twin to his father’s helmet rested on his chest as the boat was given one last push from the dock. Astrid, her children, her children’s children, watched their chief, the last dragon-tamer sail away into night. Her sons and grandsons knocked smouldering arrows, but before they could raise their bows a faint sound rose over the waves. A sound, so old and achingly familiar Astrid’s tears doubled. A high whistling shriek that was followed by a pillar of indigo fire engulfing Hiccups funeral barge. Startled screams ran through the crowd gathered on the bluffs above, and the villagers scattered. The Haddock family turned as one to Astrid, watching with awe as she waved serenely to the sky. A low, sad howl trailed into the distance, and the barge burned.

The next day, Hiccup Haddock the Fifth pushed a chair over to the bookshelf, and pulled down the Book of Dragons.


End file.
